Development tools

Earlier this week, Texas Instruments introduced their latest IP phone development platform that's designed to allow IP phone manufacturers to create solutions that will offer a truly feature rich experience to end users.
I was fortunate to meet TI's Kim Devlin-Allen who heads up the company's business development efforts for CPE VoIP Communications Infrastructure and Voice DSP Systems to discuss the latest news.
Devlin-Allen told me that the latest offering from TI - the TNETV107x family -- is designed to allow developers to build solutions to serve the full range of clients, from entry level IP desk sets to fully featured executive IP phones. She explained that the new platform will include the TMS320C64x series digital signal processors and will allow developers to leverage a wide range of TI's silicon and software solutions to create their IP devices.
Developers can also take advantage of TI's OMAP technology for ultra low power and amazing graphics capabilities to give their customers more options.
One of the things driving developers to design more fully featured phones is the fact that a younger generation of employees entering the workforce are demanding all the bells and whistles of unified communications and a platform that would allow them to access all the features and applications they need to be more productive.
The chips will be available in the first half of next year.
Texas Instruments also announced a new customer that is leveraging TI's TNETV1055 platform to develop a high-definition voice IP phone. TI announced the Yealink Network Technology has designed the SIP-T28 to support the wideband codec G.722.
The phone is described as a "stylish 6-line IP phone featuring 16 programmable function keys, four soft keys, an XML screen, SMS language customization and 'groupable' enterprise phone books, among other features."

Opera Software released latest version of its Opera Mini 4.2 browser for mobile phones. The company reports that speed trials have shown a 30% speed increase for users in the US, due to the addition of a new Opera Mini server park in the US.
According to the company, this release also marks Opera Mini's official availability on the latest version of the Android mobile platform. A technical preview of Opera Mini was previously released for an earlier version of Android in April 2008. I covered that here.
One of the neat things about this version of Opera Mini is that it offers support for more than 90 language versions, including Amharic, Armenian, Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Kirghiz, Lingala, Marathi, Malayalam, Mongolian, Oriya, Punjabi, Pashto, Sinhala, Tajik, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu, Uzbek, Khmer, Kashmiri, Lao and Turkmen.
This is great news for native speakers of those languages and on a personal level allowed me to use words like Pashto, Lingala, Assamese and Urdu -- in context -- on my blog.

It's been a busy week for our friends Sangoma Technologies. Earlier this week, Sangoma announced their first-quarter financials and yesterday, the company announced a new series of analog voice cards. Rich Tehrani had the chance to interview Sangoma VP of Sales and Marketing, Doug Vilm. When you're done reading Rich's interview, surf on over to the Open Source PBX Community on TMCnet for more.

As the year comes to a close, it's time again to feature that publishing staple -- the year end interview.

I'm fortunate enough to work in an industry where people not only have a lot of interesting things to say, they're not shy about sharing their thoughts and insights with our audience.
Below you'll find links to several interviews I've posted with some of the companies that operate in our space.
Among the threads that are tying these together (so far) is the belief that mobility holds the key to our industry's future. Mobile VoIP, mobile video, mobile UC... you get the picture.
I invite you to take a look at this first batch of interviews. There's more on tap, so check back often.
The Future of IP Communications Rests With the Mobile Device
Jon R. Doyle, CommuniGate's vice president of business development talks about mobility...
Open Source IP PBX Vendor Gains International Recognition
Xorcom CEO Eran Gal discusses open source and the opportunity ahead...
Look For Mobile UC To Open Up In 2009
Vivek Khuller, President and CEO of DiVitas Networks remains cautiously optimistic for 2009...
The Future of IP Communications?

Check out Rich's recent entry about the Feds "Raining on Digium's Parade" by coming out with a statement about how Asterisk-based systems may be more susceptible to certain attacks, like vishing, spoofing, etc... via VoIP. Visit the IC3 for the original complaint. For the complete response from Digium's Asterisk Community Director, John Todd, be sure to read his blog entry titled SIP Security and Asterisk. I posted a short summary article here.

So yesterday, the Open Handset Alliance announced that 14 additional companies were joining the Android alliance, demonstrating "their support for Android as an open mobile platform and their commitment to its commercial success."
The newest member companies are:
· AKM Semiconductor Inc.,
· ARM
· ASUSTek Computer Inc.
· Atheros Communications
· Borqs
· Ericsson
· Garmin International Inc.
· Huawei Technologies
· Omron Software Co. Ltd.
· Softbank Mobile Corporation
· Sony Ericsson
· Teleca AB
· Toshiba Corporation and
· Vodafone
Adam Leach, principal analyst at Ovum believes the move will lead to a greater number of devices based on the Android operating system over the next year.
Said Leach, "This announcement signals greater confidence in the OHA and the Android platform within the mobile industry. The extended membership will lead to a greater number of Android devices in the market next year and could lead to much-needed consolidation in the mobile Linux space."
"Google and its OHA partners have the opportunity to build critical a mass of supporting handsets during 2009," Leach added. "If [Google] achieves this momentum in the handset market in 2009, then it has the potential to challenge Nokia and the Symbian Foundation for dominance in the handset software market."

DataViz is well known in the industry for its Office compatibility and productivity solutions that enable users to access their office documents on mobile platforms such as Palm OS, Symbian OS, BlackBerry, Java, Linux, Windows Mobile, Windows and Macintosh. Their solutions include mobile Office suite, Documents To Go, and wireless Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync client, RoadSync. Well, now we hear that they will be developing Documents To Go and RoadSync for Android in 2009. No word yet on exactly what features will be supported with Android. If you wish to be notified on availability, news updates or provide feedback please the company has set up the following URL: www.dataviz.com/android

On the events side at TMC, we're always looking to deliver compelling content to the attendees at our shows. As many of you are no doubt aware, ITEXPO is just around the corner. The show will be taking place this February 2-4 in Miami Beach. For more information, or to register, please visit the ITEXPO event Web site.
The purpose of this post is to draw your attention to a very special session that we are offering to ITEXPO conference attendees.
On Tuesday, February 3rd, from Noon to 1:00 P.M.

Speaking of Canada, Dialexia and Sangoma today announced successful interoperability between Dialexia's award-winning IP-PBX, Dial-Office, and Sangoma's NetBorder Express Gateway. The Dialexia-Sangoma partnership will enable enterprise customers to easily deploy the Dialexia Dial-Office all-in-one, SIP-based IP PBX and interconnect their IP Telephony with the PSTN. Sangoma is a Gold sponsor of the upcoming ITEXPO, which kicks off in Miami Beach in just five days. Makes sense on so many levels. In addition to the obvious IP Communications hook, it's generally colder in Canada than it is in Miami Beach this time of year... Montreal = 12⁰ ... Toronto = 20⁰ ... Miami Beach = 80⁰ I can't wait!

Open source is really all the rage these days in IP Communications. In fact, a recent report from Eastern Management Group puts the Open Source PBX market share at 18% - not bad when you consider the incumbent companies and technologies that are being displaced.
Companies such as Digum, Fonality, Sangoma, and others are considered to be the leaders in the open source space, and all these companies will be in attendance at ITEXPO, which starts tomorrow.
In addition to educational seminars and training sessions on how to use, deploy, manage, etc... an open source PBX, one of the key open source attractions at the event will be Digium|Asterisk World.
The first ever Asterisk event focused purely on Asterisk for business, Digium|Asterisk World is "Everything Asterisk" for the business user, reseller, and executive decision maker.
The following partners will be exhibiting alongside Digium in the Digium|Asterisk World pavilion:
· AG Projects
· Asteria Solutions Group
· Camrivox
· ContactQ (Braxtel Communications)
· FreeSide
· High Powered Help
· Infradapt
· Interlink Communication Systems
· Net2phone
· openLINE Networks
· Orecx
· Presence Technology
· Transnexus
· VoicePulse
· Xorcom
Digium|Asterisk World promises to be one of the highlights of the overall ITEXPO event taking place at the Miami Beach Convention Center tomorrow through Wednesday.
For details on attending the show, check out the ITEXPO home page.
For an overview of the available open source related training sessions, check out Rich's blog on the subject.